Galaxies Apart

Forty Six

Wedge was cold.

He'd been cold before, sure. But never like this. This was a cold so fierce, so complete, that it burned his body. He'd done what flight school's '10 situations you hope you're never gonna find yourself in, but…' manual had said to do in these situations: he had burrowed into the snow, packed it around him, his precious signal beacon secreted beneath his clothes to keep it warm and operational.

His life depended on it.

For a few hours, the flaming wreckage of his Speeder had provided warmth. He knew it had probably saved his life; he had ejected not far from his own crash site, but the impact from landing had broken his right leg. He had crawled, bleeding and in agony, over half a mile from his resting place to his Speeder's final berth. But Fest's climate was cruel and swift, and the fire had not lasted long.

And neither would he.

It was a strange death, he reflected, his mind swimming in and out of possessing the capability for clear thinking. Not in one way; despite being surrounded by his faithful Squadron at almost every turn of his combat career over the last three years, he had always suspected that he would die alone. But not like this. He had dreamed of a more significant death. Not the victim of an attack gone wrong, slowly turning to ice in the middle of a snowdrift, unlikely to be found until Fest emerged from its latest glacial epoch.

He thought of Winter. He had met her for the first time not long ago, in a hurried Alliance meeting on some nondescript backwater planet, which seemed to be all the Rebels could hope to achieve these days. She had spoke little during the meeting, as had he; starfighter jocks such as Wedge were there because, after three or four hours of politics and grand speeches, he might actually get a target for his next hit-and-fade mission.

"Rogue Leader?"

Ah. So the hallucinations had come early. Wedge's tired, frozen eyes opened and he eventually made out the silhouette of Jansen, one of the Rogues stationed on Fest. Jansen had begged to be included in the mission itself, but they had only managed to acquire five Speeders, and Jansen hadn't quite made the cut.

It had saved his life.

"You're going to be okay," Jansen told him gently. Wedge felt himself lifted, felt something be pressed to his neck and a soft hiss against his skin.

Over the next month, he woke occasionally, and most of the time when he did one of his Squadron would be there, just 'keeping an eye' on their leader. When more of his strength returned, he tried to chase them away, and he usually succeeded; only for another member to have resumed the watch when next his eyes opened.

They hadn't abandoned him. Jansen and the rest, they hadn't given up. They had pulled him from the jaws of death and had brought him back.

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"I just lost my starboard engine," Jansen's voice sounded, not a little disbelief evident in his tone.

"Rogue Eight, eject!"

And that's when he heard it in Jansen's voice. That change. That difference in tone. "Maybe next time, Rogue Leader," the man who had pulled him from the snow answered him, "I have something else in mind. Been a pleasure."

"Jansen, you eject right now! That is an or-"

Boom.

Wedge watched as one of the primary turbolaser cannon turrets at the far end of the Trench was engulfed in flames. Jansen had known the only way to score a direct hit was to stay in his seat until the last possible second, long past the point of safe ejection.

Six of his pilots had entered that Trench. Six were now gone. More and more TIE squadrons were launching with each passing moment, making the already astronomical odds that much more ludicrous. Rogue Squadron laughed at the odds, so the stories went, but Wedge Antilles wasn't laughing.

He wasn't beaten either.

He threw his X-Wing into a steep dive, making straight for the Trench. "All Rogues, follow me," he ordered. "We're going in. All of us."

He saw them swing to accompany him, matching his approach vector, dipping under the wave of TIEs that had been on a direct intercept. The nearest X-Wing to him swung up alongside. "Let's do this, boss," Dack said. His sentiments were echoed by the remaining four pilots.

"Copy that, Rogue Seven," Wedge said, pride at the men he had trained shielding him momentarily from the hopeless grief that had threatened to overwhelm him.

After only a few seconds, they had dipped below the walls of the Trench. Entry from above was only possible at a certain point some way removed from the exhaust port; further up the Trench, the outcroppings were too prominent, too close together, for even the most skilled (or suicidal) X-Wing pilot to have attempted to weave between. In addition, a clean proton torpedo launch required a certain cruising speed to be achieved, which ruled out a simple hover in, hover out manoeuvre.

All of which added up to the most lethal thrill ride Wedge had ever encountered in his years as a pilot.

"Watch our six, Rogue Nine," Wedge advised. Nine was flying backstop in this formation, which screened him from the worst of the turret fire coming straight down their throats…but also made him first port of call for the TIEs that would be-

"They're coming in," Nine broke in, right on cue.

"I see them," Wedge confirmed. His Artoo unit bleeped nervously as the tactical readout on his screen told him what he already knew; six TIEs had made the drop to pursue, two banks of three, with the faster, more deadly TIE Interceptor flying point in each trio.

"Engaging evasive. I'll buy you time, Rogue Leader."

"Copy, Rogue Nine," Wedge replied, his mind ticking over their situation and desperately trying to see a way to even the odds. "Rogue Twelve – I want you to shunt all of your auxiliary power through your hyperdrive motivators."

"Sir?" Twelve came back. "That much of a power dump would cause my navicomp to freeze up…"

Wedge hoped fervently the Empire hadn't cracked Rogue Squadron's frequency. "Exactly, Hobie – it's your classic youm-boosh trick."

He half-expected Hobie Anders to tell him he was crazy. But he should have known better of a Rogue. "Copy, Rogue Leader. Be seeing you…"

A spark of energy flared in Rogue Twelve's systems. His X-Wing sparked, and Wedge watched as it rose up and out of the Trench. The TIEs closing in from behind didn't deviate their course; they would be under orders to clear the Trench of Rebel ships at all costs.

Nine was as good as his word, but he was running out of evasive patterns. The tactical computers in the chasing TIEs would be analysing his flightpath, searching for a way to predict his movements, and when-

The Interceptor fired, and just like that, Wedge had lost another Rogue.

He watched as the twin ranks of TIEs closed the gap more, this time coming up on Rogues Two and Three, flying in formation together to provide cover for Dack in Rogue Seven and Wedge in Rogue One, flying point.

"Get ready, Rogues," he said tightly.

His computer bleeped for attention. He looked down, blinked in surprise. "I'm in range," he said. A keypress extended the targeting computer visualisation sub-screen, its numbers scrolling downward.

The TIEs were closing. They fired in synchronisation on Rogues Two and Three, who executed a breathtaking display of close-formation evasives, banking, rising and diving over and around each other to avoid the barrage. Wedge knew they couldn't do it forever.

He also knew they wouldn't have to.

The rightmost TIE of the closest trio exploded. Wedge risked taking his hands off his controls to punch the air with a fist. His screens showed Rogue Twelve re-entering the Trench on a steep vector that would be useless for levelling out to fire a proton torpedo…but was excellent for strafing TIE fighters with laserfire.

Navicomp power overloads were spectacular to witness from the outside, but done correctly and with enough control, they were harmless and reversible. The Imperials had forgotten about Rogue Twelve. Hobie Anders, however, had not forgotten about the Imperials.

The TIE Interceptor banked across and left, gambling that its wingmate would be quick enough off the mark to enable them both to escape. Unfortunately for the Interceptor pilot, his surviving colleague was nowhere near the pilot his wingmates had been. The TIE Fighter and Interceptor collided, each spinning crazily out of control and out of the Trench altogether. Rogue Twelve, at the zenith of his diving approach, had to find a way to-

"Rogue Twelve," Wedge heard Dack shout in warning, "Hobie, the second group is closing in-"

Fireball.

Wedge's jaw set. Sacrifice after sacrifice was being made out here, just as in the Battle of Yavin five years ago. He was damned if they were all going to be in vain. They had four Rogues left, the three remaining Imperials had to close the gap, and he would get his-

His Artoo unit's scream was the first warning he had. The blossoming ball of flame and wreckage blooming from the Trench wall ahead of him was the second.

He jinked his X-Wing to the right as much as he dared, almost scraping the paint from his craft's hull against the rightmost wall; the spouting inferno ahead of him flashed past to his left in an instant and was gone. His mind tried to piece together exactly what he had just seen.

"It's the TIEs above us," Dack said, suddenly sounding every inch a young man and not a fighter pilot. "They're throwing themselves into the Trench. Suicide runs."

Wedge had a sudden flashback to Sluis Van, and to setting that terrible trap to destroy an Imperial Star Destroyer and set their plan to capture the Alderaan into motion. He had been trying to justify that action to himself ever since, and had not yet succeeded – might never succeed.

So how do you like it now? was the thought that flashed through his mind.

There were no tactics he could advise. No countermeasures. Nothing. The Imperials had abandoned such notions.

"Full throttle!" he hollered, but too late. Far too late.

Behind him, he saw one, two, three TIE fighters, travelling at what looked like maximum sublight velocity, impact on the Trench. The resultant destruction engulfed the second wave of TIEs, their own ships.

As for Rogues Two and Three…they never knew what hit them.

Dack's X-Wing and his own barely escaped the brunt of the blast wave, their ships rocking, almost colliding. Wedge's tactical readouts, redirected by his Artoo unit to display the area above them rather than behind them, showed more TIEs, entire Squadrons of them. All descending at collision speed toward their position.

"Any ideas, Rogue Leader?" Dack said hollowly.

The numbers on Wedge's targeting computer continued to scroll downward. He would watch that countdown until the second he died, but he would never see it reach zero in time. There wasn't enough time.

Unless-

"Just one," he said, having to restrain the sudden insane urge to laugh. So they said Rogue Squadron dealt in miracles. He was about to attempt one.

"We're gonna close our S-foils."

Dack could have said many things to that. He could have said – are you insane? Closing the S-foils not only knocks out our weapons systems until we open them again, it kicks our engines into overdrive. We can't possibly control the X-Wings in these confined spaces at that kind of speed. And how in every kind of hell there is are we supposed to choose the perfect moment to open the foils, fire the torpedo, and get the hell out of here?

He didn't say any of those things.

He was dead.

Not every ship in that second trio of TIEs had been destroyed in the first suicide run from above. The Interceptor had survived, and with Dack's sensors turned upwards just as Wedge's own had been, the pursuing ship had no trouble in closing the gap and pulverising Dack's X-Wing to debris in a sustained burst of fire.

And Wedge flew, alone. The last survivor of Rogue Squadron. Final hope for the destruction of the Death Star, a squadron of suicidal TIEs seconds from impact from above and an Interceptor behind him with a clear shot.

An image of lying in that snowbank, waiting to die from the cold or the blood loss, flashed across his mind.

Now this…this is more like it, he thought, and closed the S-foils.

The X-Wing underneath him jumped forward. This close to a large gravity well like that of the Death Star, the sort of velocity he'd just accelerated to produced too many Gs even for the inertial dampers to compensate for. He was pushed back into his seat, his teeth grinding together.

The light of explosions behind him. He hoped Dack's killer had been somewhat irritated to have survived one suicide run only to be obliterated by the second.

Walls closing in, all around him. He had to move…had to move his damn arms to those controls half a galaxy away at the other end of his cockpit…his great big Bantha-like arms, each one a deadweight of Dreadnought proportions…and for a second, he thought he saw an immense green burst of light above him…

He screamed a soundless scream at the strain on every muscle, managing somehow to turn the X-Wing to the left, the right, down to avoid a low bridge, up to meet the rising surface of the Death Star as he had been freed from its gravitational eddy; escape velocity on a narrow scar of a Trench…by the Force, they'd have to listen to him talking about this one back at the officers mess…

A tear, its shape flattened by gravitational pressure, leaked from his eye. His wingmates were gone. The finest pilots in the galaxy. There would be no officers mess. There would be no unconscious ringing around him upon choosing seating arrangements at table. There would be no chasing them away from his bacta tank. Not ever again. He knew this.

There would be no second taste of perfection with Winter. He knew this too.

Wedge's eyes filled with blood as the pressure burst their vessels. He hung to consciousness by a thread, his grip on the throttle and rudder controls slackening fatally. And yet, from a place quite apart from his body, he found a smile, for he knew something else.

There would be no Death Star.

He flicked the control that opened the S-foils. The X-Wing slowed. He lurched forward in his seat, the giant hand that had been slowly crushing his ribcage abruptly lifted. The end of the Trench loomed large, dead ahead. And beneath it, a small thermal exhaust port, right below the main port…

The counter on his targeting computer hit zero.

"One in a million," Wedge whispered, and launched his torpedos.

Dead centre.

He had no time to pull up – had to eject –

Moments later, another fireball lit the surface of the Death Star, as Rogue Squadron's final X-Wing went the way of its fellows.

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Chewbacca was no stranger to strangeness, but the sight of someone other than Han Solo sitting himself down in the pilot's chair of the Millennium Falcon like he owned the ship was hard to take. Jacen faced down his instinctive snarl.

"Han's out cold," he said simply. "We need to get to that portal before it closes, Chewie. Any objections?"

Reluctantly, the Wookiee let the matter drop. The boy may have unquestionably been Han's flesh and blood, but his attitude…there was a cocksureness about him that Han possessed in spades, sure, but with Han it was always coupled with that vulnerability that was so quintessentially Han. With Jacen…that tendency for arrogance seemed increasingly untempered by any trace of humility.

The Falcon was exiting Site Zero's hangar bay. Suspicious of strangers or not, Chewie wasn't happy at simply leaving their former companions behind with the Dark Jedi, but even with his tenacious grasp of time-travel, he understood that if they succeeded in getting through that portal, none of this would even matter.

Suddenly, that if became a much bigger issue.

"The Death Star is preparing to fire," Jacen announced. Chewie looked at his readouts, confused as to how Jacen could know this, before he realised that Jacen was not reading it from a screen – his eyes were closed. He was sensing it.

Chewie growled. After Yavin IV, he didn't need to be told twice what a Death Star could do with its superlaser. He threw the Falcon to full throttle and chose an escape vector to bring them as far away from Site Zero as possible before-

Green points of light joined in a lattice over the circular depression in the northern hemisphere of the massive battlemoon, before joining to form a single beam of awesome destructive power. The beam arced past them, its outer fringes missing the Falcon by only a few thousand miles; had Jacen not provided the warning, the ship would have been fried instantly.

As before, the superlaser struck home at the heart of Site Zero. Just like the first time, the station did not demolecularise explosively; rather, it absorbed the blast, its immense energies winking out altogether for a moment.

A long moment.

"Something's wrong," Jacen said, panic evident in his voice. He sprang from the pilot's chair. "The station can't absorb it this time. It's coming apart. It's losing power!"

The enormous discharges of energy that had given Site Zero its living halo of power did not resurface. Without the huge grounding sparks from that energy connecting the portal to the station, the portal was beginning to shrink.

Chewie moved to regain the controls, to try and steer the ship, but before his huge hands could even begin to wrestle with the navicomp controls he felt the Falcon lurch forward, springing from its previous heading like a gorged mynock. His flash of puzzlement was even shorter this time – a quick glance over at Jacen's rapt expression of concentration and focus told him all he needed to know.

"It's closing…" Jacen whispered. Whether he was speaking to himself or attempting to explain his actions, Chewie couldn't guess. "We have to make it through…!"

"What's going on?" a weak voice called from the cockpit entrance. Chewie yowwwlred in delight to see Han awake and on his feet. Jacen barely seemed to notice. The Falcon was closing the distance at an incredible rate, but the portal was shrinking exponentially now, collapsing and folding in on itself faster and faster. A gateway that had been big enough to potentially encompass a Death Star was now smaller in width than a Star Destroyer.

"Jacen…?" Han said again, his voice stronger this time.

"Yes?" Jacen turned his head to answer, but the Falcon remained under his command. They had only moments before the portal would cease to exist.

"Where are we going?"

"To make a better galaxy," Jacen replied. He frowned then, and a dark shadow seemed to pass across his face. He fixed his attention behind Han with such intensity that Han could do nothing but turn.

"Hello, Han," a complete stranger, dressed in a Jedi robe and clad in a blue glow from head to foot, inclined his head politely in greeting. Had Han been inclined to glance back out of the cockpit window, he would have seen space around them buckle and warp. They had entered one of the temporal eddies around the portal's perimeter, slowing time to a crawl momentarily.

"Just who the hell are you?" Han managed to say.

"My name is Anakin Skywalker."

"You can't stop me, grandfather," Jacen warned.

"Grandfath…?" Han said. He threw his hands up. "I give up."

Anakin only had eyes for Jacen. He nodded, and there was a deep sadness in his eyes as he did so. "I know, grandson," he said gently. "And I'm not here to try. I'm here to tell you that I love you."

Jacen seemed not to know what to say to that – it was almost as if he'd been expecting to have to fight the spectre of the dead man that had appeared before him. With that taken away, he looked lost.

"I…" he began, and then turned to glance out at the vista before them, still mired in the slowness of a temporal distortion, the portal – so much smaller now – still a shimmering beacon, almost within touching distance.

"We're going to make it," he said, almost disbelieving.

"Yes," Anakin nodded.

Tears began to well in Jacen's eyes. "I never thought…" he said, his voice wavering with emotion. "I'm going to fix it, grandfather. For your daughter. For my Mom."

Anakin stepped toward his grandson and embraced him. There were tears in the older man's eyes also as he broke away from the contact. "Don't lose yourself, Jacen," he said. "It's so easily done…believe me, I know only too well. Don't be so concerned with your place in the universe that you forget to take the time to remind those who love you why they love you. Promise me that."

Jacen frowned, puzzled. "Grandfather…?"

"Promise me," Anakin said, more urgently. Blue light spilled through the cockpit now. The portal, now barely big enough to allow the Millennium Falcon passage through, not only seemed close enough to touch – it was.

"I promise," Jacen said, and in the blinking on an eye he, his father, Threepio, Chewbacca, and the Millennium Falcon passed through that portal to the past – and vanished from the galaxy, a heartbeat before the portal collapsed into nothingness.

But the more-than-a-spectre of Anakin Skywalker remained. Suspended in space, he gazed into the blackness of the void that had just swallowed his grandson.

"Raise me well," he whispered. And he vanished too.

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"Direct hit on exhaust port! Chain reaction imminent!"

"Sir, we have to get you to your shuttle!"

"Sir, evacuate immediately!"

"Grand Admiral, we have to move!"

So deranged with panic was Pellaeon that he considered simply leaning forward and shaking Thrawn from the stupor he had slipped into. But the Grand Admiral's attention was fixed on the viewscreen displaying the portal.

"Too late, Captain," he said softly.

Pellaeon saw the ship make it through the instant before the portal vanished. Successfully traversing time, undoubtedly to some point in the past, where they would proceed to rewrite history to their own making.

"We lose," Thrawn sighed, and prepared himself for the onrush of oblivion.

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Oblivion did not come.

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The Death Star did not explode.

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"We're…we're alive," Pellaeon said, cherishing each new word his lips had the ability to make. "We're still here," he went on, growing in confidence that he was not about to vanish into an explosive cloud or fade into nothingness with each heartbeat.

He had never seen Grand Admiral Thrawn lost for words. He saw it now.

"I…don't understand," Thrawn admitted. He looked lost. "Nothing has changed. What happened to that direct hit on our exhaust port?"

The Chamber Master, his face ashen, looked up from his post. "No question of it, Grand Admiral. Direct hits, released into our reaction chamber. I saw the readouts. But…no chain reaction. No detonation."

Silence reigned on the bridge. Pellaeon couldn't quite absorb how lost for words Grand Admiral Thrawn was. The man seemed quite overcome, indecisive even. He walked a little closer to his CO and lowered his voice.

"Sir," he said, "suggest we move the ship to a safe distance…and then," he nodded to Site Zero on the viewscreen above, "we blow that thing out there from the skies once and for all."

Thrawn's glowing red eyes, so formidable to face, turned up to regard Pellaeon with such gratitude and warmth that Pellaeon felt himself redden a little. "I won't forget this…Admiral Pellaeon," Thrawn told him, equally quietly.

Allowing Pellaeon to absorb that for a moment, Thrawn was Thrawn again. "Helm, bring us around! Distance of four million miles! Chamber Master, once we're there, commence primary ignition!"

A chorus of affirmations rang out. Thrawn settled back in his chair and smiled the first truly genuine smile Pellaeon had seen the man produce.

"Let's finish it," he said.